La Cucaracha

Late night infrared photo of a bipedal fiendishly grinning half-human/half-roach La Cucaracha, who is stalking the Crispie Creme Donut Shop.

An online report (click here) in the Daily Times (24-4-12) suggests  that City Solicitor Mike Jones has been getting away with health violations at his Crispie Creme Donut Shop on the corner of Gallia and Waller Streets in Portsmouth. It looks like  Jones has been shown favoritism by the Portsmouth City Health Department. He claims the only issue with his donut shop is infrastructure problems, like the ceiling. Do I understand right? A ceiling falling on you is not a health risk? A dirty floor is not a health risk? But the report in the PDT makes clear infrastructure is not the only problem. The PDT says infestation by “insects” has been persistent. Is insect a euphemism for something?  What are we talking about? Ants, or praying mantises, or what? I doubt it’s ants. A study done at San Jose State College in 1992 determined that ants know better than to eat in donut shops—they know it’s bad for their health. When’s the last time you saw an obese ant? Ants apparently have a much higher DIQ (Donut Intelligence Quotient) than roaches, who get addicted at the drop of a jelly donut. Roaches are apparently “unmentionables” at the Health Department, and even the PDT story didn’t break the taboo by mentioning them.

And we know how desperate donut-addicted roaches  are. In 1939, in Squareton, Indiana, a donut shop owner Walter Jones (no relation to Mike) was reportedly tied up and tortured  by swarming  roaches who had become infuriated when Jones placed Roach Motels (roach traps) throughout his  donut shop. How they tortured him is too gruesome to detail but it involves all those feelers. As hard as that story is to believe, how about the rumor that, because conditions are  so terribly unhealthy at Crispie Creme, a roach mutated  into a huge donut gorging half-roach/half-human creature, La Cucaracha,  that stalks unaccompanied overweight females who buy donuts late at night to bring back to the dorms in Hatcherville. If ants know  what’s good for them, shouldn’t Shawnee State students, especially liberal arts majors?

Is City Solicitor Jones getting away with health violations?

And what has Jones done about cleaning up his shop? Very little judging by the story in the PDT. He is apparently no better as a donut dealer than he is as city solicitor. He gives the phrase out to lunch  new meaning.

You can help fight Portsmouth’s obesity epidemic and roach infestation by not patronizing Crispie Creme, especially if you are an overweight female with a late night yen for donuts.

 Remember the motto of Crispie Creme: Keep your eye upon the donut and not upon the roaches.

For an earlier posting on Crispie Creme, click here.

The Marting Foundation

The Marting Foundation: The Scamarting of Portsmouth

Statement of purpose of the Marting Foundation on its first filing with the IRS for the year 2002

The death of the crooked SOGP (the Southern Ohio Growth Partnership) is a blessed event  in the history of Portsmouth, just as May 29th, 2002, the day the Marting Scam was perpetrated, was “a day that should  live in infamy,” as Andrew Feight put it in “‘Follow the Money’: A History of the Marting’s Scandal.” The SOGP is dead, but its partner-in-crime, the philanthropic front entity known as the Marting Foundation, continues to feebly live on, further tarnishing the once respected, even beloved, Marting name. According to official documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service, the Foundation was established as a charitable organization: “For the purpose of promoting and advancing economic betterment in Portsmouth and Scioto County on a not for profit basis.” That’s what the official statement says, but I believe the Foundation was established  for the economic betterment of the corrupt clique that controls the city on a for-profit basis. I believe the  Foundation was established by the nearly bankrupt Marting Brothers Company with the aim of  liquidating that company and paying  off its local stockholders, especially the largest shareholder (26%), Richard D. Marting, by laundering  the $2 million dollars the company acquired in 2002 from  its  illegal sale to the city of the decrepit and scandalously over-appraised Marting department store building.

The Foundation worked closely with the Marting Company  to deceive the public. Working closely was not hard to do since the trustees of the Foundation were also the trustees of the Marting Company, and for all we know they were also trustees of the short-lived front, the Marting Brothers Acquisition Company, also created in 1996. The overall scheme was so incredibly complicated and convoluted it  was like a distorting mirror in a fun house. It was not just a conflict of interest; it was shameless collusion. From 1996, when the Foundation was created,  to 2010,  Wisnieswski, Johnson, Arnett, Jenkins, and Payne  were also trustees of the SOGP, making it a trifecta: The Marting Company, the Marting Foundation, and the SOGP.   Julia S. Wisniewski, the chairperson of the Foundation, is the owner of Smith’s Drugs, in downtown Portsmouth. Randal M. Arnett is the CEO of the Southern Ohio Medical Center (SOMC). Gerald R. Jenkins is the former president and member of the board of the American Savings Bank. Roy Payne, now deceased, was the first dean of the College of Business at Shawnee State U. Clayton Johnson, was the lawyer who represented the Marting Company and masterminded the  sale of the Marting building to the city. Together, Julia Smith, as Chairperson and Johnson, as ringleader, were the Bonnie and Clyde of the Foundation, only they didn’t rob banks: they borrowed money from them, which was not hard since Johnson was on the board of directors of two of the banks involved: Bank One and the Oak Hill Bank.

The money that the Foundation dispensed from 2002 to 2010 went principally to two organizations. (1)The primary recipient, the Portsmouth city government,  received a $200,000 “kickback,” as Feight called it. Those who follow the machinations of the city council more closely than I do tell me that exactly where and to whom in the city government the $200,000 went is something of a mystery. When asked in a city council meeting, neither Mayor Kalb nor City Auditor Williams could say just where the money went or how it was used. (2)The next highest amount granted was a total of $65,000 to the  Southern Ohio Museum, a pet project of Johnson’s wife, who was its executive director. The Foundation’s 2003  filing with the I.R.S. (below) shows the first down payments, of $100,000 and $5,000, to these favored recipients. Note that the highlighted second column asks if the recipient of a grant is an individual, has he or she any relationship to  any manager of the foundation. The museum is an organization, of course, not an individual, so “NONE” is listed, but it still appears to be a conflict of interest, if not nepotism.

  

What gets publicized are the smaller grants the Foundation makes to other groups and organizations, such as those that make shelter available to homeless pets and people. The Foundation’s more public-relations-minded, smaller grants get publicized while the much larger grants to the pet organization of Johnson’s wife and to the crooks in city government are not considered front page news. Conceived in scandal, dedicated to the laundering of the illegal money from the sale of the Marting building, the Marting Foundation should give back the money it robbed back to the city and dissolve so the Marting scandle can finally be put behind us. The Marting name is now mud and Wisniewski and the others will be too as long they are associated with the Foundation.

Julia Wisniewski ( right) giving Marting Foundation check to Sierra Haven Animal Rescue Center, in 2011.

To read Andrew Feight's outstanding article on the Marting Scam, "Follow the Money," visit his Lower Scioto Valley website : click here

To read Clayton Johnson's testimony before Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation on Teresa Mollette's terrific website, click here

Front Street: Unsafe at Any Speed

Front Street: Unsafe at any Speed

Council member Kevin Johnson is trying to get the city to do something about a dangerous intersection. He should  also make an issue of Front Street, in his ward, where Portsmouth’s traffic problems literally begin. Because of its mixed and incompatible uses, and its lack of a traffic light; and with only one stop sign, which happens to be hazardous; and above all because of the speeding,   Front Street functions as the Portsmouth Raceway Annex. As they enter Portsmouth on the West Side, on Route 104, drivers coming over the  Scioto River continue at harebrained speeds on to Second Street, without being slowed down by the posted 35 mile hour speed limit. Maybe the presence of the Speedway, which they pass as they enter the city, makes  them feel like they’re in the last lap of the Indianapolis 500.  The wild ones entering Portsmouth on Route 104 know that there’s an even faster way to speed through Portsmouth than Second Street. Just dogleg right on to Front Street, and you’ve got only one stop sign to bother with. That’s it. There’s not another stop sign on Front  Street from Scioto Street to Shawnee State. 

Mural watchers, two in wheelchairs, one in stroller, maneuvering around two of the  ugly fifteen planters on Front Street

What follows is a list of users on Front Street

·   There is first the mural traffic, which is naturally slow with frequent stops and starts.

·   Then there is the morning late-for-work and afternoon early-getaway-traffic, which pays no attention to the 25 mile per hour speed limit, partly because the only speed limit sign is at the other end of Front Street facing traffic coming west.

·  Next there are the motorcyclists who are attracted by the marvelous motorcycle mural, which is a magnet, the single most visited and photographed  mural on the floodwall. 

·   In addition to the vehicular traffic, there are the pedestrians, most of whom walk on the sidewalk on the northern side of Front Street. But some pedestrians, often especially those accompanied by children, prefer to view the murals by walking along the eleven-foot-wide strolling area next to the flood wall. Those in motorized wheelchairs also prefer to view the murals by traveling along this strip, as do classes of school children. One morning recently  I saw  preschoolers being shepherded along the strip by two adults, with cars speeding by a few feet away on the road.  

·  In addition to all the pedestrian traffic, joggers have in the last couple of years become a conspicuous part of the passing parade on Front Street. Many of the joggers are Shawnee State students, sometimes as many as twenty  in a phys-ed  class or  in clusters of four or five jogging to stay fit.  Joggers run on  both the road itself and the eleven foot wide strip next to the wall. Several organizations sponsor races that use Front Street as part of the course.

Joggers on Front Street running past moveable staging used to clean and touch up murals.

From the beginning, the 11-foot-wide strip had five large planters, holding  plants and flowers. One of the  original purposes of the big planters may have been  to serve as obstructions to any driver who might dare to pass a pokey tourist. No impatient driver would want to tangle with a heavy duty planter. Several years ago some group  placed a  dozen or so smaller planters on the strip with the aim of beautifying Front Street, as if the murals were not beautiful enough. Perhaps the plants and flowers are appreciated but the planters are not:  they are unattractive hazards and  obstacles for pedestrians and joggers, as well as for the two employees on movable staging who touch up and clean the murals year round.  The planters are made of a relatively light synthetic simulated  stone material that the wind and vandals occasionally knock over. There might be a proper place for the planters, in the cemetery perhaps, but not on a street that is as crowded as Front Street.

     Something has got to be done or there could be a serious accident, in which children or disabled people might be injured or killed. Now that J. Edgar Horner is history, maybe the Traffic Committee can be more constructive and less obstructive. But I doubt it. I am told anyone who doesn’t comply with the do-nothing policy of the traffic committee is removed by one means or another. 

 Suggestions for the Traffic Committee 

·   Insist that the police enforce the 25 mile speed limit. Police cruisers frequently go well over  the 25 mile limit in driving from the Municipal Building at one end of Front Street to the police clubhouse near the other end, so they will have to turn over a new leaf before they begin enforcing the limit for others. Now that Horner is no longer chief of police, maybe officers will  not be quite so eager to get away from the police station.

·  Put several stop signs along Front Street. The one sign that now exists at the end of the floodwall is obviously not enough.

·   Consider lowering  the speed limit from 25 to 20 or even 15 miles an hour. When Front Street reaches Shawnee State University, the posted limited becomes 10 miles an hour, and speed bumps help remind drivers to observe the limit. I am told speed bumps were tried on Front Street back when Frank Gerlach was mayor, but  trucks going too fast over the bumps caused dishes in the Biggs House to rattle. Of course nothing will help—not speed bumps or stop signs—if speed limits are not displayed and enforced.

·  Request that whatever group put them there find a  safer, more appropriate place than Front Street for  their simulated stone planters.

·   Repaint the faded traffic lines on Front Street, which are now almost invisible.

·  Repaint the now invisible yellow line along the edge of the  eleven foot strip to make it clear cars and motorcycles should not park or drive on it.

One or more of these suggestions might be worth following. The more popular the murals and the heavier the traffic becomes, the greater the chances of serious injury. Drivers should be discouraged from thinking they are on the Portsmouth Speedway, where there are no speed limits, and  made to understand they are on Front Street, where there are limits that are strictly enforced.

The one stop sign on Front Street is a hazard because it stops only vehicles going east. The other side of the sign is blank, so those driving west do not have to stop, even though just ten yards ahead is a hidden opening where vehicles exit to Front Street from the river side of the flood wall.

Let the city stand on notice that an accident at this spot could cost taxpayers much more than putting another  stop sign on the blank side would.

In summary: Not only is drug trafficking a serious problem in Portsmouth, so is traffic per se. Between the potholes, the faded lane markers, the eliminated traffic lights, and the wannabe Marlon Brandos, driving in Portsmouth is unsafe at any speed. People tend to drive as they live. People who flout laws regarding money, and go bankrupt, as  Kalb, Malone, and Haas have done, also tend to flout laws regarding driving. They don’t observe speed limits because those limits are not enforced as much as they should be. I think people who can’t get ahead in life, want to get ahead on roads and highways by ignoring posted speed limits. I’ve never lived in a town that observes speed limits less than Portsmouth. Maybe the lawlessness of Portsmouth can not begin to be turned around until traffic laws are enforced, and a good place to start enforcing them would be on Front Street, where the police frequently speed between the police station and their clubhouse. Instead of setting a bad example, they should be ticketing.

The Wild Ones

 Jim Kalb is a prime example of a wannabe Brando. He’s been breaking traffic laws since he was knee high to a pill popper. He rides two wheelers but doesn’t have the brains of a three wheeler. As mayor he  crusaded to reduce the number of traffic lights in the city.  We are still living with the consequences of his traffic light foolishness. And how about the  wild wannabe,  city auditor Trent Williams, on his motorcycle?  And don’t forget our serial speeder, councilman Saddler. I suppose city council president Haas is willing to pay much more for high powered foreign cars than he is for child support because he can pass everyone on the highway.  I’ve never lived in a town that observes speed limits less than Portsmouth. Maybe the lawlessness of Portsmouth will not be turned around until, as a first step,  traffic laws are taken more seriously and all the wannabe Brandos stop speeding on Front Street.

SOGP: "It's dead! It's dead!"

The SOGP: “It’s dead! It’s dead!”

The headline of a story in Monday’s Portsmouth Daily Times (2 April 2012) was “Gampp: SOGP to Fade Away.” Mike  Gampp, president of American Savings Bank, who just recently replaced the disgraced Bob Huff as president of the SOGP,  told the PDT, “I believe you are going to see the SOGP fade away. It’s not going to exist anymore.”  Yes,  Gampp, Portsmouth's most politically active banker, and the rest of the SOGP gang wish the corrupt Southern Ohio Growth Partnership, of which they were an integral part, would just fade away and never be heard from again. But from a public relations point of view, the demise of the SOGP is not what Gampp should have been trumpeting and not what Frank Lewis, if he had been doing his job at public relations correctly, should have used as his lead in Monday’s PDT.

Bob Huff was recently fired after it was discovered he was using Portsmouth Murals Inc. (PMI) monies to pay operating expenses for the SOGP. But that’s really old news—at least a week old. The negative impression Gampp’s inept attempt at a whitewash  made on Monday had to be corrected on Tuesday. The day after the “Gampp: SOGP to Fade Away” story appeared in the PDT,  another more upbeat story appeared the next day, Tuesday, with the headline, “Community Action to Buy Welcome Center,” the opening sentence of which was, “The future of the Scioto County Welcome Center is brighter after Community Action of Scioto County announced Monday it was purchasing the building for $300,000.”  Instead of negative words and phrases like “fade away,” “discrepancy,” “defunct,” “concerned,”  “SOGP’s time had probably come and gone,” tell-tale words in  Monday’s story, Tuesday’s story had words and phrases such as, “This is a win win,” or even better,  this is a “win win win,” “it’s an opportunity that came along that we couldn’t pass up,”  “brighter,” “collaborative effort,”  “asset to the community,” come to “fruition,”  “excited” [twice], “relieved,” “complete reorganization,”  “great thing,” “something to celebrate,” and last but not least “bingo.”

Yes, providing bingo is one of Community Action’s public services, and it is considering moving that most boring of all addictions for the elderly to the Welcome Center. But won’t  that interfere with the questionable  coin  auctions that occasionally take place at the Welcome Center? Perhaps those two things—bingo and coins—could   be combined into a more “exciting” game, which might be called bunko instead of bingo. In case you forgot, bunko is a swindle perpetrated by two or more con artists on a naïve victim.  Portsmouth may be not only the Oxycontin but also the bunko capital of Ohio. Bunko-games, as they are sometimes called,  are usually accompanied by a lot of bunkum, or hot air,  which appears to be Gampp’s speciality. Incidentally, Gampp’s nickname among CAVE people is “Double Pee,” in keeping with the CAVE people’s nickname for the SOGP—the “Soggy Pee.”

American Savings Bank, where “Double-Pee” is president

 I and other CAVE people were shocked-shocked when we learned Huff had been  dipping into PMI funds to pay SOGP operating expenses, and we were shocked-shocked that businessman Chris Lute, who thinks the minimum wage is un-American,  and former city council member Ann Sydnor, who has been feeding at the public trough since the Stone Age, had no idea that squarepants Bob was sponging on PMI, even though Lute and Sydnor are  vice presidents of PMI.  You would think Sydnor in particular, after all her years in public service, at city government, at PMI, and at Community Action, would have been a better financial watchdog since she knows as well as anybody that the city has been illegally using funds intended for capital projects to pay operating expenses, such as salaries and benefits  of city officials and employees, for a long time, letting the Municipal Building fall into disrepair in the process. Why pay for the upkeep of the Municipal Building when salaries and benefits for the mayor, the auditor, the city solicitor, members of city council, and all city employees can be persistently increased, even when the city is operating at a deficit?

The SOGP has been a bad influence in Portsmouth for a long time, as far back as the 1960s (under another name), but it could not have done so without the money provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture,  millions of dollars  that the SOGP then loaned out  to favored parties as a form of political patronage, including reportedly to members of the SOGP inner circle. The SOGP was a private organization doling out public money without being obligated to disclose what they were doing since open records laws don’t apply to private organizations. The SOGP was the main means by which greedy lawyers and developers in Portsmouth evaded the bothersome constraints of democracy.

The Scioto County Welcome Center: Another Portsmouth Pork Project

On Tuesday Lewis recovered his PR stance and made the bad news sound like good news. Nothing had happened between Monday and Tuesday as far as the Welcome Center was concerned. The sale of the Welcome Center to Community Action was mentioned Monday, but it was not spun the way Gampp and the rest of the SOGP gang would have liked. Frank Lewis had got carried away on Monday and apparently forgot that his primary job at the PDT is public relations, not reporting news. Jeff Barron lost his job at PDT for reporting that somebody arrested for dealing drugs was employed as a mechanic at Glockner’s. That’s when angry Andy called the PDT and Barron was fired. I wonder if someone contacted the PDT after the Monday story “SOGP Fading Away” appeared?Lewis better watch his step. Even somebody as adept at spin, and as eager as he is to be a tool, can anger the SOGP gang, or should they  now be called the Public Spirited Citizens, or the  PSC:  Gammp, Thacker, Morton, Walton, Lute, Sydnor, etc.? Lewis better remember the cardinal rule of public relations: he  can’t be frank; he can’t be critical—not of the people who control Portsmouth, not  if he wants to keep his job.

Rob “Porkman” Portman, godfather of Welcome Center

 I once compared the Welcome Center to one of those “social clubs” in lower Manhattan that are fronts for Mafia families. Huff will fade away, possibly right into jail, but the other usual suspects will still be at the Welcome Center. The bipartisan corruption for which Portsmouth  is notorious, the same lack of competition, the same toothlessness at the Portsmouth Daily Times, will continue. The SOGP is gone but the Chamber of Commerce, which fathered it, will be up to its old tricks, and Senator Rob Porkman, the godfather of the Welcome Center, and the Attorney General, Mike DeWine, whom I once photographed in the gutter outside of Clayton Johnson’s office, may turn the usual blind eye and the SOGP will, as Double-Pee predicts, fade away and be forgotten.

Mike DeWine in gutter outside office of Clayton Johnson

Earlier postings on SOGP:

http://rivervices.blogspot.com/2006/05/shadow-government.html

http://rivervices.blogspot.com/2009/01/shadow-govt-update.html

http://rivervices.blogspot.com/2012/03/sogp-its-alive-its-alive.html

Albrecht's Etch A Sketch

News item: "Romney campaigns on Etch A Sketch platform . . ."

Meanwhile, Jeff Albrecht  . . .

. . . shakes his Etch A Sketch and Presto!  

 The Marting building is replaced by the Fifth Third building
 as the best place to move city government.

Footnote: Bryan, the home of Ohio Art, Inc., makers of Etch A Sketch, is in the very northeast corner of Ohio. Since 1960, more than a hundred million of the buggers have been sold, but since 2000 manufacture of them has been outsourced and off-shored to China! Of course, that number is far short of the number of Oxycontin prescriptions that have been written in southern Ohio, so Bryan is not equal  to Portsmouth when it comes to the numbers game. But Bryan does happen to be the home of Horace G. Prettyman, the first Ohioan to play football for the University of Michigan. I happen to have bought at an auction in Athens, Ohio, a cap worn by Prettyman, but it was stolen when my car was broken into several years ago in Portsmouth. Below is a photo of the cap. I have heard from a private detective I hired that a cap of that same description has since been sold at an another auction in Athens, Ohio, an auction that was reportedly rigged, but I have been unable to confirm that rumor. 

Think Tank or Stink Tank?

The headline in today’s online Portsmouth Daily Times reads, “Think Tank Mulls Revitalization Plans.” Think Tank? Who knew? And who dreamed up the  name for this glorified “Bilking Committee”? Given some of the usual suspects who are on it, a more appropriate name for it, somebody suggested to me, would be Stink Tank. Shouldn’t a basic requirement of membership in a think tank be the ability to think? Yes, one of the members, Kevin Johnson, can think but he can’t think straight. And another member, Jeff Albrecht, can think but when it comes to Portsmouth he can’t think of anything except the land on which the Municipal Building sits, the land across the street from his new Holiday Inn. Albrecht may have been hankering for that city owned  land for at least ten years. I’m fairly sure he was  the secret developer whom the mentally challenged Jim Kalb alluded to ten years ago as wanting that land in the worst way. It may have been Albrecht lusting for that land who set in motion the whole chain of events that led to the city’s purchasing of the Marting building. The idea was to have the city government move  out of the Municipal Building and into a renovated Marting’s Building so the Municipal Building could be torn down so that the unnamed developer (guess who?) could build on it. This is like a chess game in which all the pieces cannot be moved and so are worthless, as Albrecht admitted to the PDT that the Marting building, the Adelphia building, and Fifth Third building are. “He,” Frank Lewis wrote, referring to Albrecht, “said none of the buildings, on the surface have any value on the market.”

Now Albrecht or somebody on the Think Tank has come up with a recycled bilking proposal: move city offices out of the Municipal Building and into the Fifth Third Bank building, on the corner of 6th and Chillicothe, catty corner from the Marting building. This proposal is déjà vu all over again, because the shyster lawyer Mike Mearan, no less, made a similar proposal some years back. Under its phony red brick facade, the Fifth Third Bank building is the decrepit twin to the Marting building with its phony yellow brick exterior. It’s half a dozen of one and six of the other. Mearan tried to tout the Fifth Third Bank building as a new home for city offices, but Frank Gerlach told me when I interviewed him in 2004 for the documentary Recall, which is available in the Portsmouth Public Library and the Clark Library at SSU, that behind its faux façade that old building has serious heating and cooling problems that will probably be expensive to fix. Presumably those problems still exist and are probably worse in the unused 78 percent part of the Fifth Third bulding than they were in 2004.

Financial Finagling at Fifth Third

       Now that Fifth Third is being proposed again as a place for city government to move to, the apparent financial finagling about the value of that building should  be remembered. Here is what I wrote about the Fifth Third building in River Vices in 2006: “According to records at the county auditor, available online, Fifth Third paid $231,000 for the property in 1998. Those same online records say that in 2005 the property had increased in value to $2,847,020. How did that happen? That’s a staggering 10-fold increase in value in seven years. If Fifth Third could sell the property at anything approaching $2,847,020, or even half of that, it would still be doing well financially. I learned from a visit to the auditor’s office that just this year [2006] the value of the property had been  'readjusted,’ and dramatically reduced to $1,281,490, or less than half what it was worth last year [2005].” A question I will ask now, in 2012, is this: Did that ten-fold inflated price of $2,847,020, have anything to do with somebody’s dream of unloading that unmarketable property off on the city, as the Marting Foundation had done the Marting building? And even the current valuation the auditor’s office puts on it of $1,281,490 seems like a fantasy concocted to convince the city it would be getting a good deal if it would only take it off the hands of the owner, Fifth Third, who could claim a tax write-off as the absentee owner of the Adelphia building did when Mearan helped him unload that on the city.

       Maybe the solution to the whole problem is to have an auction like the one Albrecht was a party to in Athens, Ohio, an auction which the Ohio Attorney General suspected Albrecht had rigged. In Portsmouth’s incestuous culture, everything is rigged, in my view, because there is  no real competition. Everything is kept in the family,  which is the way the corrupt city government, the Bilking Committee, and now the “Think Tank” aim to keep it. (Click here to read an earlier post on Albrecht.)

“Under its phony red brick facade, the Fifth Third Bank building is the decrepit twin to the Marting building . . .”  

SOGP: "It's Alive. It's Alive!"

Creation of the SOGP Frankenstein Monster

The SOGP has been in the news lately. An article appeared in the Portsmouth Daily Times (21 April 2007), in which chairman C.B. Hermann said SOGP members must work “behind the scenes” and “must maintain secrecy at times because of the nature of business they conduct.” Hermann added, the SOGP “worked behind the scenes [emphasis added] to foster the premise that if we could bring jobs to the area, it would help the local economy.” Andy Glockner of Glockner Motors put it less elegantly, “We [SOGP] just want to be recognized as the back office that’s here for economic development to support the chamber, the murals and any other entity in a way to create the financing or be the front person.” Not a lawyer or a PR person, Glockner unintentionally spilled the beans. “Back office” and “front person” says all that needs to be said about how the SOGP operates – in secret and as a front. It is a private corporation, yet from its back room offices in the publicly funded Welcome Center, just one of its pork projects, the SOGP meets in secret and makes decisions that determine what happens in Portsmouth, economically and politically.

The kind of jobs the SOGP are after are not industrial jobs. Herrmann said, “it’s doubtful a Honda or Toyota plant will come to the area. Therefore, SOGP concentrates on attracting smaller businesses.” In response to Hermann’s comment, Robert Madison wrote a letter-to-the-editor, saying, “In reviewing the history of the organization [SOGP], it looks like it started with the best of intentions. But maybe through the years it has lost its mission. Instead of selling water, maybe it’s time to think bigger and go for the Honda or Toyota plant and bring real jobs to Scioto County.” Madison’s letter asks an extremely important question about the Portsmouth area, maybe the single most important question: Why has Portsmouth been in the economic doldrums for so long?

The SOGP ’s Predecessor

Whatever may have been the case with its predecessor, the Portsmouth Area Community Improvement Corporation, the SGOP did not start with the best, but with the worst of intentions. Considering who was behind it, how could it have been otherwise? What Johnson and his crowd created in the SOGP is not just a glorified Chamber of Commerce, it is a transmogrified Chamber of Commerce, a monster that rules Scioto County the way Frankenstein did Transylvania. The SOGP has, working “behind the scenes,” in Hermann’s phrase, debased local government by making a mockery of competition between the two main political parties. You can’t tell the Democratic whores from the Republican whores. Local government has become the preserve of the incompetent, the criminally inclined, the near comatose, and the unemployables (it is the wives of the unemployables who hold down the jobs, in the public sector).

Those in control of the SOGP, like Clayton Johnson and his buddy Neil Hatcher, have made fortunes in Portsmouth not in spite but because of the economic doldrums the city has been in for the last half century. The worse things are in Portsmouth, the better it is for the SOGP, because they control most of the pork that comes into our economically depressed area in the form of government grants and loans. They not only control the pork, they also control local government and are able, with the collusion of politicians who can be bought for the price of a John Street whore, to monopolize and manipulate whatever local business opportunities there are. Because there is no real competition for the Johnsons and the Hatchers, they can’t lose. Imagine a team that has no opponents. They can really rack up the points. Neil Hatcher should have lost his shirt in his dumb plan to build a huge shopping mall on the site of the demolished Selby factory, and he would have lost his shirt if the game he was playing in was not only not just fixed but in which there was no opposing team. The city will bail Hatcher out by buying his virtually worthless mall property at his price, to build a sport’s complex, just as the city bought the worthless Marting’s building, at Clayton Johnson’s price, to convert to a city hall.

From PACIC to SOGP

There are Community Improvement Corporations (CICs) all over Ohio. That other CICs may have turned into the Frankenstein monster that the SOGP has is quite possible. But the few that I have looked into, such as the one in Chillicothe, do not appear to be scam operations. To quote from earlier River Vices postings, “It has happened gradually and unobtrusively, without most people being aware of it, but over the last half century, important functions of Portsmouth local government have been privatized. The result is that we now have a powerful shadow government, the origin of which can be traced back to 1964. In March 1964, the Portsmouth City Council made a momentous decision. In a resolution, numbered unlucky #13, the council turned much of the economic control of the city over to a private ‘non-profit’ corporation named the Portsmouth Area Community Improvement Corporation (PACIC). In Resolution #13, the Portsmouth City Council granted PACIC an extraordinarily broad mandate. The extraordinary mandate of this private corporation, consisting mainly of businessmen, bankers, and lawyers, was no less than ‘To promote the health, safety, morals and general welfare of the inhabitants of the community . . .’ In the following year, 1965, the Ohio state legislature passed a law allowing municipalities to designate community improvement corporations, such as PACIC, as their agent. As if PACIC hadn’t already been granted extraordinary power in Resolution #13, the Portsmouth City Council passed another resolution (#30), designating PACIC as the city’s official agent, or legal representative. PACIC eventually morphed into the SOGP.”

They are trying to stifle and intimidate critics, but over the years a handful of courageous souls have stood up to the SOGP and its predecessor. There was the “Unbribed Trio” of Clausing, Price, and Daub, back in 1980. Prof. Larry Essman told me he first got involved in the reform movement as early as 1974 when he was Asst. Auditor and realized the PACIC was not interested in having Toyota or anyone else build in the Portsmouth area. I have heard the same story from others, such as Rich Noel, who discovered as a result of involvement in area development discussions that the PACIC and SOGP were always more interested in excluding than attracting new businesses. New businesses and industries were the last thing they wanted because that meant competition. Glockner did not want competitors in vehicles, Marting’s did not want competition in retail sales. Councilman Bob Mollette, the only city official in the present government truly representing the citizens, wrote in a letter to city council that this is an unacceptable situation. “I believe the relationship with the SOGP, if considered an authorized agency that represents our city, must be accountable and transparent.”

Through their political puppets, the SOGP is trying its damnedest to drive Mollette from city council as the PACIC drove out Clausing, Price, and Daub back in 1980. Through their political puppets, the SOGP is trying to stop citizens from speaking at city council meetings, labeling them as Domestic Terrorists. As for transparency and accountability, sunshine and democracy, those are not on the Frankenstein SOGP’s agenda.

[This is  reposted  from April 2007 with the recent Marting shenanigans in mind ]

Marting's: The Bilking Committee

The “Bilking” Committee

     To bilk means to defraud, cheat, or swindle. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, the sharks have spawned another Marting’s monster. The unannounced goal of the Latest Building Committee, as was the goal of the Previous Building Committee, chaired by the shyster Mike Mearan, was to help the sharks complete the Marting swindle. Some of the members of the Latest Building Committee may have understood that the purpose of the committee was to screw the voters who have turned Marting’s down more than once, but some members apparently didn’t understand or accept their role, resulting in a lot of confusion, like the  Marx Brothers movie the Big Store. (Click here  to link to earlier post on Marting’s.)

The Marx brothers would be right at home at Marting’s, along with Kevin Johnson, co-chair of Bilking Committee

Confusion and chaos reigns. The Latest Building Committee was supposed to allow the public to attend its meetings, but they proceeded like thieves in the night, as if the last thing they wanted was public scrutiny. They wanted to slip in and out of the Municipal Building with a key provided for them by Mowery. They also wanted to keep from the public as long as possible the names of the individuals connected with the non-profit entity that Kevin Johnson said was willing to take possession of the Marting Store, renovate it, and lease offices in it to the city government. The non-profit took the offer off the table today, the 29th, because it could no longer be kept under the table, which is where these characters prefer to operate. Only Kevin Johnson, the go-between in the proposed sell-out, knows who these shadowy individuals are and his lips are sealed. He self-righteously pronounced, already having kissed some millionaires’s behinds, that he would never reveal who made the offer. Johnson plays the role of the holier-than-thou nun in the whorehouse of Portsmouth politics.

    The chair of the Latest Building Committee, Alan G. Barlow, a man of honor,  has resigned as of February 29, 2012. In a letter to the unelected mayor of Portsmouth and the City Council, Barlow wrote, “In my opinion the Building Committee has been nothing but a sham and exists merely to give ‘cover’ for certain elected officials and their plan to use the Marting’s building against the wishes of the public.” The Latest Building Committee is  nothing but a front for what I am calling  the Bilking Committee, the committee that really has the power, in my opinion, and which is operating undercover, or under the table. The only item on  the Bilking Committee’s agenda is to move city government out of the Municipal Building and into the renovated Marting building so that the Municipal Building can be torn down and some form of gambling casino can eventually be erected in its place. Gambling casino? Yes, gambling casino, on the theory that if you build it, they will come and gamble. If you think this swindle has gone on for ten years only because of the Marting building, you are missing the point: it is the Municipal Building, not the Marting building, that is the big prize, because the land on which the Municipal Building rests is a potential goldmine if and when gambling comes to Portsmouth.

“Co-Chairs” of Bilking Committee

  In my view, the  co-chairs of the Bilking Committee are First Ward Councilman Kevin Johnson and Municipal Judge Steve Mowery. When Johnson and his late partner arrived in Portsmouth around 2005 and opened their high-end antiques store on Chillicothe Street, their solution for the economic ills  of our depressed city was gambling. Johnson and his partner also backed  lapdog Jim Kalb for mayor. Kalb is for anything that serves his multimillionaire masters, which gambling would. We shouldn’t be surprised that Mowery would be co-chair of the Bilking Committee because he announced publicly at the Welcome Center, when running for the judgeship, that he was for renovating the Marting’s building and moving city government offices and the Municipal Court there, even though the voters had soundly rejected that move. The other members of the de facto Bilking Committee are Jim Kalb, David Malone, John Haas, and Nicholas Basham. The Latest Building Committee may be history, but the Bilking Committee will continue to push for moving city offices to the Marting building.

        The reason the names of those representing the non-profit organization were being kept secret is not hard to figure out. One of them, the front man,  is rumored to be the puppet Terry Ockerman, with Clayton Johnson and possibly Neal Hatcher pulling Ockerman’s strings. If it was revealed that either Clay Johnson or Hatcher had any connection with  the non-profit that wanted to take possession of the Marting’s, it would have been the kiss of death as far as the voters are concerned. There is already one Johnson involved, Kevin,  and another, Clayton, would have made it two too many. The sharks wanted to keep notorious names  out of it as long as possible. The Latest Building Committee emails that were released recently under a public records request indicate that Kevin Johnson threw a hissy fit and vowed he would no longer have anything to do with the Marting scam. Let’s hope he’s a man of his word. And let’s hope, after ten years, that a stake will finally be driven through the heart of the Marting monster and both Johnsons will stop trying to shove it down citizens’  throats.

“Kevin Johnson, co-owner of the Emporium of Portsmouth, said there are a number of reasons he is supporting legalized casino gambling, including the potential for significant economic development.” 

                                                                              From the Portsmouth Daily Times, 28 June 2005

From Moses to David Malone

“Moses, here are my Ten Commandments. Make sure David Malone gets a copy!”

The article below appeared on the website Edge, the editor of which is Steve Weinstein, who says he grew up in Portsmouth. What Weinstein apparently does not know, which makes this story very ironic,  is that the unelected, bankrupt, hypocritical Mayor of Portsmouth, Rev. David Malone,  is reportedly a notorious philanderer, including with women in his own congregation. If so, he is hardly the person to be condemning Johnson. “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone,” the Bible says. The seventh commandment declares,  “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Maybe Malone has not got the word yet.

Rev. Mayor Malone Announces Sewer Increase to Rats

“I don’t care what you rats think. We’re raising your sewer rates ten percent too and there ain’t 

 nothing in this here bible that says I can’t. Right, Mr. Auditor?”

From Ashes to Ashes

From Ashes to Ashes, from Drugs to Bust

“But with the right vision, with the right decisions, and with the right management, success can happen, even out of ashes.”

The clipping above and the quote below it is about the Columbia Theatre from the January 2012  issue of the Shawnee State student newspaper The Chronicle. It is not just misleading, it is false. The student reporter was misinformed, if not lied to, by the crooked ex-mayor James Kalb and his wife Allison. Contrary to what the story says, the Kalbs do  not own the Columbia. The Scioto County Auditor’s website lists Christine Scott, not the Kalbs, as the owner of the property. (See Auditor ’s record below.) Christine, a lawyer, is the wife of Lee Scott, a local businessman, who is the true owner of the Columbia. Scott’s postings on Moe’s Forum leave no doubt who the boss is.  Contrary to what the Chronicle story says, it was not the Kalbs who restored the Columbia. It was not the Kalbs who had “the right vision,” and made “the right decisions.” It was Lee Scott and his son Eddie who had the vision and restored the Columbia. They did it in the face of enormous obstacles—one of which was  Greg Bauer, another crooked ex-mayor of Portsmouth, who did everything he could to stop the renovation. The other obstacle was the fire that gutted the interior of the interior and left the ashes referred to above. I videotaped Lee and Eddie doing restoration, before the fire, for the documentary, Recall, available at the Shawnee State Library and Portsmouth Public Library.

Kalb has had a twenty very odd year career in local politics but only because he was willing to serve as the faithful lapdog to the unelected multimillionaires who control the city. Currently, Kalb is Lee Scott’s lapdog.  Lee Scott has a felony conviction for drug trafficking, and ex-felons are prohibited by state law from owning any establishment that sells alcohol.  Lee’s wife Christine, a religious woman,  reportedly would not agree to have a liquor license in her name, which is where Kalb comes in. Kalb  is the front man for Scott. The liquor license and the business are in Kalb’s name. And the business is alcohol. It could not survive without it. “The Columbia now has a full bar and concessions,” the story says. “Our goal is to cater to the students,” Allison Kalb told the reporter. With Kalb and his wife operating the business, it’s a virtual certainty that not all the students who consume alcohol on the premises will be of legal age, although their friends who do the buying may be. Nor will alcohol be the only drug consumed either.

The Kalbs are a curse, to themselves and the city. They illustrate the curse of drugs in America. Kalb’s only son has a long history of drug abuse and recently served a drug-related prison term in Chillocothe. A brother of Kalb was also reportedly involved heavily in drugs. The Chronicle story says “success can happen even out of ashes.” There a lot of ashes in Kalb’s life, if you know what I mean, but little success. He failed as  a grocery clerk at Kroger’s  where he would have been fired long ago, I was told by a former employee.  if it weren’t for the Teamsters Union, which provided him with some job security. Kalb’s rap sheet, which I recently posted on River Vices speaks for itself. He and Allison have already declared bankruptcy once, and, they could file again, perhaps bringing the Columbia down with them.  Lee is taking a big chance letting them front for him. But you won’t read about that in The Chronicle, which makes the Columbia sound like some kind of mom and pop operation, the better to lure homesick students to Ma and Pa Kettle’s—I mean Ma and Pa Kalb’s—din of inebriety. 

Auditor’s records showing Kalbs do not own Columbia Theatre